Rear-view mirrors in the automobile branch are usually designed and optimized according to a number of current criteria. For typical known automobile mirrors, made, for example, based on coatings made of the highly reflecting metals silver and/or aluminium, one of the essential design and optimization criteria is the achieving of particularly high reflectances. Furthermore, however, in modern concepts for automobile rear-view mirrors, a number of additional criteria are also taken into consideration, which shall guarantee for the driver a particularly high fidelity of reproduction, even under changing environmental or light conditions, as well as the greatest possible freedom of glare or the lowest possible glare when driving at night. The design criteria to be taken into consideration can be, among others, the spectral reflection properties, reproduction of colors, low glare, or the like.
Such aspects are usually used for designing automobile rear-view mirrors which shall exclusively have a mirror function. In this case, in particular a more or less complete reflection of the light stream incident on the mirror—neglecting any possible absorption effects—is required. Especially in modern cockpit or display systems for motor vehicles, one tries, however, to combine mirror elements, in particular the inside mirror, with additional indicating and display functionalities, in addition to the mirror function properly speaking. For this purpose, in particular the mirror element properly speaking shall be supplemented by a display or indicating element arranged—viewed from the viewer—behind the mirror element, so that, in addition to the mirrored picture, additional information can be displayed for the viewer in the same field of view, through a suitable selection of the indicating or display unit. The above-mentioned conventional automobile rearview mirrors are not suited for such a combined setup.